


The Lack of a Conclusion

by ninen (aeine)



Category: MindCrack RPF
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-22
Updated: 2015-03-22
Packaged: 2018-05-03 23:09:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5310626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aeine/pseuds/ninen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Agent B looked at Agent E, their tailored suits slowly warming up under the heat of the open sun. E nodded, and they approached the gate of the residence. They had come to collect the dying.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lack of a Conclusion

**Author's Note:**

> I had originally posted this [here](http://mindcracklove.dreamwidth.org/938097.html), but I had long left the fandom before I wrote this so I posted it under a different name. For purposes of claiming my work I decided to post it here as well. Just some warning, it’s been left unedited and if I recall correctly, something I wrote in a rush.

I still remember the days when no one knew about the future.

The death on your gravestone was an unknown. It wasn’t a variable that you included in your life. But suddenly, people began to have those fucking dates inscribed on the inside of their wrists. It happened slowly. No harm came of it. And the dates that did start appearing were dates from the next year. Not everyone had them.

When nothing came of the dates, people dismissed them, and they moved on. No one paid attention to the dates. No one. In fact, Europe had actually started joking about how they weren’t ever quite sure if it was month/day/year, or day/month/year. There was no rhyme or reason to how the dates appeared, only that it slowly appeared over the course of a week.

By the end of the week, you had a stunningly dark, impeccably lettered date on the inside of your wrist. And people compared those dates. People thought they were prophetical, too, so some people who shared the same dates ended up going on dates and eventually getting married.

No one thought they would be the day they would die.

I was spared. Did you know that? I was spared. I didn’t have a date. Sometimes it made it more frightening. Other people had time. Well-defined, neatly packaged, enough to make plans, enough to make a legitimate lifetime. I didn’t. I had infinity. It made me want to throw up, sometimes, that I didn’t know when.

Other days, I looked out and breathed a sigh of relief. I didn’t know. I had no knowledge of the future. I was totally, completely fine with that. There was no such thing as a countdown for me, and it was by some sort of blessed miracle that I went year by year without the black ink surfacing, drawing and tainting your skin with the day you would leave this damned place.

Later those nights I’d go back to my fears. At least they got to leave; at least they got to know when they would go. It had completely destroyed society, you see, knowing when you would die. It destroyed laws. People went out into the street screaming, committing crime left and right. Eventually, they imposed a law that made it mandatory for everyone to register their dates. When it came to the week, they came to your house, gave your family or whomever you wished some money, and took you away. It was incentive, and it worked, mostly. If you didn’t register anyway, you were taken to jail. You might as well just take the money.

My mother and father had passed away before this entire thing had started, but I still got the pity money. We call them that, now, the cash that the government hands you. Etho had dedicated his to me. I’m not sure why, but he did. They just showed up at my house. I didn’t even realize Etho had listed me in his profile, but he did. His date was December 20, 2011. I spent the day looking at the ceiling, just staring, wondering how he died.

The worst part was that I had forgotten. I had received no call from him. No indication that he was panicking, that he was scared. The guy had always been calm as hell. As a matter of fact, when the dates started appearing and he got one, he just laughed it off. I felt more scared for him than he did for himself. I wanted to punch him twice, once for laughing, once for not caring. And I did, actually. He understood.

They came, and they took him away. They didn’t tell me anything about where he was going. Actually, no one knew where anyone went. All we knew was that you were taken away by the big guys, the government, the people in the black van. Who knows where they actually went? No one knew. No one knew a lot of things, but we all knew one constant.

The second one that went was Pause. We called him Pause. I’m no longer sure as to the origins of the nickname. Pause had dedicated his check to Etho. It was a thing, I guess. We were a team. We played video games together some weekends. But it wasn’t odd at all, no, that our checks went to the other. I didn’t have a check. But anyway, yes, we had met at an arcade, where one of our mutual friends had hosted his kid’s fifth birthday. I remember that clearly, as the kid had spilled some orange juice down his shirt and it was the first time I heard Etho speak because he’d asked me where our friend was.

The next one to go was Pause. He went out fighting. The guy was a real pain in the ass, but you could count on him. He ran into everything without looking back. I suppose he did the same with death. He did call me, though. He sounded terrified. He sounded really scared, and for a while I felt like I was a father who had to comfort a small child. It was a terrifying feeling.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

“It’ll be okay, Pause. Trust me. It’ll be fine.”

“How do you know?! You don’t even have a fucking date! You don’t have to face what we face! Us! The ones who have dates on our wrists! You’re just sitting around, waiting for nothing!”

“I’m waiting for the exact same thing as you are. Don’t take this out on me, Pause, please. Your week is soon, I don’t want to have a fight with you.”

“I know. I’m just, I’m just scared.”

“I know. You’re going to be fine, okay? Here, I’ll bring a pizza over in a minute, sound good? I know it does.”

“You’re a terrible friend. Pizza? As my last meal?”

“You don’t die until Wednesday.”

“Only if I don’t have to pay for it.”

That Wednesday, the check arrived, brought by the same people. I punched the wall after I took the envelope from them. I started bleeding, and I knew my hand had broken. But I didn’t feel any of the pain. I only felt grief. The very same night, I drove down to Niagara Falls. I checked in to a dingy motel. I went out, had a pizza, and came back to collapse on the musty-smelling bed.

Morning eventually came, as mornings do. I peered at my phone and found fifty-seven missed calls. They were a mixed bag, a variety of people concerned for my mental health. I called every single one of them to reassure them that I was fine, and that I was at Niagara Falls for some reason that I still yet had to find out.

“Are you okay?!”

It was the high, concerned, nervous voice of Guude that echoed from my phone. “Are you okay, man, are you alright? Where the hell are you? I heard from Ad that you had run off! What the hell were you thinking?”

“He’s gone! He’s gone, Guude. When are we going?”

Guude had no date, too.

“No one knows. No one knows, guy, and we should be goddamned thankful for that. I know Pause was scared as fuck. He told me.”

I hung up on him. Pause had told me, too, and I didn’t need to hear another perspective. To my relief, Guude didn’t call back. Everyone else respected my boundary and didn’t bother pressing too much. They, too like I did, lost people with dates. It was always a terrifying time.

I make the annual pilgrimage to Niagara Falls. I stay at the same motel. I eat pizza from the same store. I look at a ceiling every night, and try to go to sleep. But it’s hard to forget. Etho had made it easier. The only indication he had died was the check.

Pause, as I said, always went in like there was no tomorrow. It makes sense that he’d make it hard for us to forget. If he was going, he was going and everyone knew.

Last year, I got a date. It was etched on my skin. It was the same date as Pause had. I drove down to Niagara Falls, to the same motel, and checked in. I was waiting to die in that motel room, a box of pizza next to me.

I never registered. They never caught me. I’d been branded dateless a while back.

I texted Guude: “Hey, I got a date.”

“Woo, guy, go you! Finally scoring!” he replied back. He thought I’d managed to get a date, like with a girl, I guess. I’d been depressed the entire year. It made sense. I didn’t bother correcting him. It’d make sense to him later.

But I didn’t die. The sun rose. I looked at the date on my skin. It was the correct date; it matched with the calendar and everything.

I cried that morning. I felt disappointed. It was a ridiculous feeling. I was disappointed that I didn’t die. What kind of logic was that?

I make the pilgrimage every year, but I wear long sleeves now, to hide my wrists. I was terrified of them knowing. I had stopped aging, too. I was afraid they’d hunt me down and kill me for the secrets to immortality.

It had taken a while to register. I noticed that the grey hair had never grown in. I noticed that I never got sick. Nothing happened to me. Finally, in a pilgrimage to the same motel, the owner had commented that I never looked different every time he saw me.

“I guess I’m just naturally handsome,” I joked. He laughed, and gave me the keys to my room. I jogged up the stairs, and locked myself in my room for the night until later, when I’d come out and order a pizza.

There, I realized that I might have had some sort of everlasting life. It was a bunch of shit, I also told myself at the same time, but was there really any other explanation for the fact that I didn’t die on my date? Everyone else did. I also considered the possibility that I was some sort of top-secret government experiment.

By the end of the night, I had turned into some kind of sci-fi show.

I went back, and I drove down to where Guude lived. I knocked on his door, and a sickly looking man greeted me. It was Guude, except it wasn’t. He looked frighteningly ill, and I asked him if he got a date.

He nodded. He never registered, either.

I confessed. He kept nodding, kept acknowledging what I was saying, but he never really replied. He mumbled several things at times, but usually just kept nodding until I exhausted every detail I could.

“What are you going to do?” he said slowly. “At the end of the day, I’ll be gone. Trust me, you gave me the greatest story just now, but what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“I think, I think you should go to the authorities,” was the last thing he told me before he went to take a nap. When I checked back on him the next day, he had finally passed away.

I did go to the authorities, eventually, after a decade. But it was only because Etho had showed up at my door, and he wore a pristine suit. I asked him if I somehow had died, and if I was hallucinating. He told me I wasn’t, and that it really was him, but if I didn’t come with him he’d be forced to shoot me. He didn’t want to do that, so really, I was forced to go to the authorities.

I learned that he had become a soldier. Pause didn’t make it. Etho was one of the immortals, I supposed. Pause had eventually died. So we weren’t really immortal, we were just stuck in this never-ending track of time.

Today, I collect those about to die. I’m one of the people from the black vans. I don’t really know how to feel about it, but if anything, I knew I couldn’t rebel. At least I was with Etho. At least I knew someone. A couple years after I got pulled in, a couple others that we used to know joined our unit. The years started going by and we eventually started meeting the people we used to interact with weekly. They all mostly died on their date.

I knocked on the door, and said our line. “Hello, I’m Agent B and this is Agent E.”


End file.
